He can form an alliance with both parties remaining distinct entities.  In the event of a victory of this alliance, if the AFC gets too big for themselves APNU can simply vote against them in parliament, and an APNU/PPP MONC would dash Guyana into new elections.

So the AFC will not dare to get too arrogant, as they know full well that APNU will remain the more powerful party.

I don't think you read my post carefully enough. Guyanese law is unconcerned with how parties organize themselves. I fully agree that both parties as associations of people can do whatever they please.

However, the law (Constitution and the Representation of the People Act) is only concerned with the List and recognizes only one position: the Leader of the List. There is no such thing as a "coalition" or "alliance" List.

The law only has a single "List." All lists are the same. All leaders of lists are the same. With the same powers over their respective lists. The private arrangements of people on a particular List are just that...private arrangements with no legal force whatsoever.

CaribJ is correct we have seen it is easy to remove a Corrupt Party & Govt officials.

If APNU moves a vote of no confidence...the problem will be solved in 90 days.

We do not expect the president to play Hide & Seek with parliament like Ramotar is doing.

I understand the political constraints on AFC excess. I don't suspect that they would be given to behaving as nutcases if they were to officially lead the List.

My point is just that the PNC might find it hard to swallow to scratch their names on what is for all legal purposes an AFC List. It's the psychological burden of this that I'm not convinced they can bear.

Many a clever political maneuver has been undone because one or both parties cannot overcome a psychological hangup even if they stand to benefit by leaps and bounds.

So let us say that Nagamootoo is the president and he tries to move against APNU.  Do you think that APNU will not vote against him?  Do you think that it is impossible that APNU and the PPP will not cooperate in parliament to bring down the AFC led alliance.

The PPP will harbor rage against the AFC as it is only the split of the Indian vote which would lead to their defeat.  APNU will not want to ne emasculated either.

So in the unlikely event of Nagamootoo becoming president, he will be very kind to APNU.

I believe we're speaking at cross purposes. I'm just trying to make a very very tailored point perhaps inelegantly.

It's a matter of the psychology of the PNC as a major political party taking (even on paper) a back seat to the AFC. I don't know if they're that mature yet.

Guyanese people tend to very very very legalistic. They will get lost in legalisms and lose sight of the bigger picture. Perhaps you've been away from Guyana for too long.

APNU will convey to the AFC that any act by them to support a Nagamootoo presidency is for the sole purpose of splitting the Indian vote.  APNU will remain the stronger party and will not allow itself to be assigned fewer MP positions than they merit.  The mere fact of making such a concession runs so much against the spirit of Guyanese thinking that APNU will ensure to protect themselves. 

APNU will, as part of the negotiations, insist on a formula that guarantees that they remain dominant.  Do you really think that they are dumb enough to allow the AFC to do to them what they would never be able to do if there wasn't such an alliance?

Indeed it is the AFC which will need to avoid being treated as the UF was.

The point is that Guyanese have a very simplistic view of politics.  It would make political sense for Nagamootoo to be the presidential candidate (blunting the impact of the PPP race card, assigning APNU to the PM slot, and insisting that they get the Speaker of the House slot and the majority of the ministries.

Whether they understand this is another issue.  Whether their core supporters also will understand this can also be argued (many will accuse Granger of selling out).  APNU will have to convey to their support base  they will remain powerful.

And indeed its the very lack of sophistication that will insist on that.

Please understand that racial paranoia goes in both directions.  Unless APNU were to convey that assigning Nagamootoo as the presidential candidate was a political ploy they will face accusations of "selling out the country to collie", and grass roots blacks will stay home.  They did so for Corbin for that same reason.  APNU I am sure hasn't forgotten that, as indeed this is why Granger is there in the first place.

Again, I just don't think that APNU can put aside their pride for the greater good (even their greater good).

The PNC never has been above doing inexplicably stupid and self defeating things.

The species that is Afro-Guyanese is closely related to that other irrational species known as Indo-Guyanese.

I think we agree. You, however, seem more optimistic about Guyanese idiocy than I. I hope you're ultimately vindicated.

Allocating positions are actually the easy part of this exercise. The hard part is explaining it to them dunce negroes and coolies who are unfortunately entitled to vote.

Aside from getting ahead of yourselves, that is, AFC's behavior in a post-election scenario, I believe that CaribJ's point about Moses Nagamootoo being the Presidential candidate in a joint APNU-AFC bid cuts both ways. While his candidacy will indeed bring more PPP votes away to the AFC, it can only do so with AFC as a stand-alone party. The moment AFC becomes APNU-AFC the dynamic changes for the potential PPP votes that Moses can pry away. Such votes would be scared back into the PPP fold or just stay at home. If the stay-at-home percentage of registered voters gets larger it would bring back the race-based voting ratios to normal and attractive to the PPP. Unfortunately, like racism in America, racial views about the PPP starts at home and such "education" will not take flight from the under-30 young Indians.

Shaitaan also cautions about a PNC group in APNU that is not monolithic, and any Granger's pre-coalition bid will face stiff opposition from PNC hawks. The PPP has this built-in electoral advantage.

ALL these arguments shows clearly that the KFC?PNC are all about attaining POWER. There are no concerns of the Supporters. Am I surprise?? NO!!  We dont have a merging of Parties yet nor an Election yet but we are reading arguments about MONC and in-fighting and possibilities of New Election. What about the Welfare of the Guyanese people. What about progress and Prosperity like we are experiencing for the past 22 years??  All I am hearing is how to get POWER, how can the POWER remain and not get divided up?/ Laad Ah Mercy, no wonder Guyanese will VOTE for a Party that can do better than such a combination.

 Granger has a better chance breaking the 40% barrier necessary to put him securely in office alone.

The AFC is relevant only if they can help the APNU to initiate a strategy to destroy the PPP power base by institutional changes to the system.

If they win they will have to hold back on constitutional changes until they have effectively destroyed the PPP patronage system, its financial base and through jailing some of their lieutenants.  Without power and an income stream most of the incompetent ignoramuses in the PPP will regress to irrelevance and the rest can then see the benefits of constitutional changes.

That's a whole lot of shit your brain mustered up deh banna, you musbe really tired now eh, so much for thought.

You are talking crap and thinking like jagdeo ie being guided by petty jealousies.

The system needs a cleansing and it can only be done by ruthless mechanical precision that has the ends of the state and not its elites at the core of its means schema.

If APNU puts party as their primary concern the state will suffer and they will use credibility as their past overcomes them. They will have to be different to be relevant and that means doing things for the right reasons even if it means teeth extractions in the process.

Indeed guyanese have a simplistic view of politics but that is because they do not have people to lead them to places and positions that can ultimately make them to see the world differently.

Someone has to make them grasp that viewing the world solely from the lenses of race like Yugi and the Rev sees it is detrimental to the mutual benefit of all in the society. They must be made to understand that seeing things outside the domain of race does not diminish their ethnic and cultural concerns but makes for a political construct that can see its flouring in ways not previously possible.

Forget the personalities and think of them in terms of socially organizing monads with the names labels. Look to the best arrangements these individuals could task themselves in participating in and  that will produce the most benefit to the society. It will always be with people doing freely what they do best...seek to their own interest but without the fear that they must seek to constrain others in the process.

Good post Stormiester.

For the good of the country, both PNC and AFC should refrain contesting the elections. They could help in finding a suitable Presidential Candidate and list of electors from the general public. Sixty Five of them.

A neutral candidate can set almost all fears at ease among the electorate.

For the present crop of politicians, I fear, they doan care for the progress of the country. I suspect it is more about prestige.

A politician that cares, is a person who sleeps less than the average citizen. Pre-occupied in doing better for the country. 

Noble sentiments indeed. However, I think you put too much stock in the utility of persuasion as a tactic in the Guyanese mileu. Guyanese people, like many people of low civilizational attainment, are not given to persuasion. They know what is what and not even God will tell them otherwise.

It may take another century or so of incremental civilizational gains for Guyanese to be susceptible to arguments from reason. Not this current lot though.

Granger should bin thinking outside the box moons ago. Instead, he hanging on to Roopnarine. And if Moses steps by his side, I doubt whether it would much difference. The PPP will have field day with that marriage. Moses is a liability.

I have said this many times already. If Granger is looking for the Indian, then he has better qualified than Moses to choose from.  

I must respectfully disagree there. "Qualifications" in this case should not be determinative. I think Moses is well liked and can pull votes. I doubt abbe voters are the type to pour over CVs before casting their ballot.

I said Granger should Choose. U really think that Whim votes alone going to give Granger party the edge.  

It is about t he instruments of persuasion. It could be coercive without being cruel. Demand bus drivers dress properly and stop playing loud music and fine their asses large sums for driving fast and soon you have a competition for best dressed, coiffured drivers.

There are ways to control the most unruly without them knowing they are being trained as seals. If the see benefits they will think it is natural. Look at how whose same vile foul mouthed nasty people are transformed into calm-concerned with proper English speaking-and find the trash can for their empty pop cans "kind of people" in the US and Canada. Them boys in RH dare not even slap their wives when they used to cuff them up good and proper in guyana because they know Rikers is waiting.

Stormy, this is a utopian vision that we all share. However we have to deal with the here-and-now and what's possible. We've seen time and again in American politics, as I think Mario Cuomo once said, how you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Obama had to have his party comopromise on several principles to get Bills passed - remember don't make the perfect the enemy of the good?

Guyanese in recent years have enjoyed a period of prosperity in some sectors - the mining sector and real estate. They've lived with the procurement lack-of-transparency and asset sale of State's property to friends, etc. They've also seen a quality of life that they've ratcheted down in some ways (the crimes and bribes and quality of public service) and seen an improvement in their personal lives. There are large pockets of rural agricultural areas that people are unconcerned about what's written in KN and SN.

In a word Storm, the very utopian idea you preach is what Guyanese have tuned out. the politicians do what they have to do - make these issues known to the public and use the judicial and constitutional systems as flawed as they may be. But in the end it comes down t who has the best organization to win elections and the best strategy to pull it off, given certain premises. Here are some of these premises:

• Race-based voting gives the PPP a leg-up
• Race attitudes in the home from young means that all the talk about young Indians not like their grandfather Indians hold less currency
• The AFC is stronger in the Indian areas than the Black areas and Nnaga's presence is a boon to its electoral fortunes
• AFC-APNU means that who the AFC is is no longer and old attitudes come back t the fore
• The PPP and the PNC's internal organizations will remain as patronizing and cliquish until the cows come home
• The population changes that give the mixed populace a larger share of registered voters may not shift the needle much when it comes to the old polling booth attitudes and this is where the AFC hopes to get 20% lie

OK when you wiped off the vomit from your clothes on Sunday morning after you passed out from you night of binge drinking in Saturday night you then realized that the PPP is extremely power drunk.  So much so that when they were told that May 11 was an inappropriate day to have elections, rather than shifting elections, they want to shift the exams.  This potentially exposing the kids to have to redo the exam if it was discovered that the exam questions were leaked to some of the kids.  This has happened BEFORE.

Why does the PPP do so?  Because they are power drunk and want to show who is BOSS! 

Afro Guyanese racism is very different from Indo Guyanese racism.  An Afro Guyanese is a Guyanese who happens to be black.  An Indo Guyanese is an Indian born in Guyana.

This difference in identification then impacts how they view themselves in Guyana, and how they relate to other races.  Mixed people who are part black aren't rejected by other blacks. Mixed people who are part Indian are often rejected by Indians, especially if they are part black.

Black people don't view "douglarization" as a threat to their social, cultural,economic, and political identity.  To the contrary, many view it as a way out of our ethnic distrust. 

They view Indian domination, which is occurring in Guyana, as the threat.

Indians however view douglarization as a threat.  It is more important to Indo Guyanese, than it is to Afro Guyanese, that they remain a distinct ethnic group with a distinct set of cultural values and identity.  Just read Ravi Dev on this, which is why he is seen as a racist by most Afro Guyanese.

It is not utopian. It is the ideal of democracy where merit is maximized in the society and the good ends are clear that people are able to grasp and hold on to them.

The PPP campaigns on the race baiting principle and sets Indians up to see themselves as victims by highlighting for them and sanctifying for them in language and symbols ideas of "sacred victimization" We have "ballot box" martyrs, Enmore Martyrs not as national symbols of community building but to establish and hold an ethnic wedge.

But that is changing and soon they will have to come up with a different ploy. There is no other but the virtues of democracy and its ideals. There is so much raw material to work with that if creative they can truly make hay. But this lot in office is to insular to grasp that and that unsophistication is palpable Lacthmi silver shoes!

Oh Lord. I have to now defend coolie people. So here goes.

Douglarization is indeed a threat to our survival as a distinct and recognizable group. I am opposed to douglarization as some sort of social policy. If individuals wish to have mixed relationships, that's fine.

But douglarization carried to it's finality means our extinction as a people. I don't see why we must submit to cultural genocide.

One does not have to believe in Indian domination in order to support Indian cultural and ethnic preservation. I support wholeheartedly the latter, though I eschew the former.

We are allowed under the law of nations to personally and as a group to self-define. Indians existed long before this "Guyana" construct was called into being and we will exist probably long after it dies.

I don't see why you feel it's ok to argue for the preservation of your heritage and the destruction of mine.

It's really simple..no Indians equal no Indian culture. It don't get more complex than that.

I think that we both agree that Guyanese are idiotic and politically immature.  This is exactly why APNU will not cede "power" to the AFC (which is how they will view allowing Nagamootoo to become the presidential candidate) without demanding re condition safe guards.  Not only because the PNC is as equally arrogant about their "right" to govern, as is the PPP, but also because their supporters, currently faced with economic and political genocide, are understandably quite paranoid about another group of bourgeois blacks selling them out to Indians.

Guyanese don't understand nuanced politics, which is exactly why the APNU, ceding the AFC the presidential slot, but securing the PM, Speaker of the House, and the majority of the Ministries, will be a smart move.  The PPP will not know how to respond to it, because to most Guyanese, the President is the boss, so if Nagamootoo is the boss, then how can they believe it when the PPP tells them about voting PPP because of "black man".

But this is all theoretical talk because I doubt that the PNC is smart enough to understand that conceding the presidential slot to the AFC needn't weaken them, unless they are stupid, in which case they will then deserve it.

So then the only alliance possible will be an informal one where the AFC promises to focus on Indian strong holds, and Granger continues his "photo ops" in these same strongholds, to show that he isn't the "Indian hating bogey man" that the PPP tries to paint him as being.

In other words continuing to do what they are already doing.

The best scenario will then being a PPP plurality, with a diminished vote.  The AFC will peal away more Indians, but will continue to be seen as unlikely to win, and therefor good only for a "protest vote".  Meaning that many Indians will simply not bother to vote.

APNU will remain capped at 40%, based, on its usual domination of the African and mixed vote.

So will this be PPP 45%, APNU 40%, AFC 15%.  Many of the disaffected PPP voters will not vote, blunting much growth in the AFC.

my views is with this constitution if the opposition do not fight on one front the ppp will return as a minority,and we all see the ppp minority is no different than a majority,if the ppp go back into power they will be more of a dictator than what we are seeing right now,the opposition cannot afford to miss this opportunity.the black people can give up a little power than no power.     

If the APNU remains with the same percentage and the PPP voters stay home in numbers similar to black voters last time why do you think they will still garner 45%?

Small changes, cumulatively, to the electorate behavior will produce big differences at the polls. If the 70 or so new voters who will be in the 18 to 25 range vote APNU and ACF in high high numbers the PPP will lose massively. If Mixed vote stay consistently with the APNU the same will happen also. If the AFC poaches another 5 percent, the same also happens. The PPP has so many ways to lose this that is hardly likely they can win big.

If asked whether they are race based parties, both the PPP and APNU will deny this.  The AFC trumpets itself as being multi ethnic, and above race politics.  So no party overtly trumpets racial politics, though they do so at the bottom house level.  And display this in the ethnic composition of their leadership.  And both major parties have definitely have been guilty of ethnic exclusion, which is the root of our ethnic insecurity.

But please let us not let the private sector off the hook, and pretend as if only the PPP has been guilty of attempting to exclude Africans.  The private sector is predominantly Indian and is as guilty as has the PPP of excluding blacks. 

Indeed, given that most opportunities for employment now exist in the private sector, if Africans didn't perceive bias against them in this arena, it is doubtful that they would care who governs Guyana.  55 years of ineptness and incompetence, corruption and cronyism displayed by both the PPP and the PNC have long convinced Guyanese that they are on their own.

Guyanese view life through racial prisms because that is how day to day life in Guyana is.  And until you change the daily experiences that Guyanese undergo you do not address their racial paranoia.  Telling people that the world is different is disrespecting them and so risking any credibility.

a minority government with a 2 or more seat loss is a terrible place for them. They will not be able to play the same games of demanding to create the budget with no input from the opposition etc. If they do we are back to the polls in 2 years.

I would personally be stunned if the PNC makes the deal and settles for this AFC-led arrangement just because it makes sense. It makes no electoral sense for the AFC to join a PNC-led alliance, so that's dead.

No one has ever gone bankrupt by betting on Guyanese stupidity.

From past experience, the PNC since 1992 has deluded itself that it will win an election. The party holds the distinction of being the only major West Indian political party to have never ever won an election. Yet they persist in this fantasy of "this time will be different." I'm sure waiting around for enough Indos to leave, die, or stay home is one strategy.

I do not think they are talking about that. They are possible sharing information and coordinating strategy to maximize their poaching from the PPP. They can do so independently since a message from one or t he other in the  various regions can have differential impact.